5th ed. White Box

Trying something new
Started a new campaign of my old Dreadmoor setting using modified 5th ed. rules over the weekend.  I am fairly pleased with how things went and the players seemed to have fun and want to play again in a couple weeks.  The 5th ed. rules are relatively easy to modify, yet persist in carrying their own feel despite my tinkering.  My goal is to have play as close to my old White Box campaign as possible while using a modification of the new system.  I have been playing, and occasionally refereeing, the 5th ed. game since it was released last year. I basically like this edition, well much more so than the last two and a half or three editions. One of the principle reasons is the smallish monster stat line as opposed to paragraphs as seen in some editions.
I think 5th ed. has been easy to modify, up to a point.  For Dreadmoor I limited the class and race options, ignored feats and multi-classing and reduced alignment to the big three, Law, Chaos and Neutral. The spells that I don't think fit are unavailable and of course the Dreadmoor specifics are brought in, such as the way I handle religion. Aspects of 5th ed. I found more difficult to change and which are persisting in giving the game a somewhat 5th ed. feel are the saving throw mechanic based on ability bonus plus proficiency, if applicable, and 5th ed. skills. I am trying to look at skills as a formalized way to test attributes in order to accomplish certain tasks, which is something I have done for decades in White Box, but the saving throw seems a game changer. Yeah, I could just take out the saving system of 5th ed. completely and substitute the White Box save tables (with modification for new classes), but I am trying to play 5th ed. in a white box manner, not rebuild white box using 5th ed. tools. The fact that I could probably substitute one saving throw system for another is something I like about both white box and 5th ed.
The backgrounds aspect of 5th ed. I am really liking and I think does a nice job of helping get the imagination going regarding PC backstory. We did character gen at the table as a group activity which I think has advantages and disadvantages, one of which is the pressure to think quickly. The background section of the 5th ed. PH can result in a multitude of variety and all the players seemed to have a good feel for their PC by the time we started roleplaying.
The five players, three of which are under twenty-five and have no idea what white box amounts to, probably don't care. They seem to be taking my game modifications in stride as part of the peculiarity of the Dreadmoor setting. We are only one game into the campaign so I don't know if the changes will ultimately be to their liking or whether they will eventually express a preference for 5th ed. as written.  Meanwhile this is a rather fun "experiment" for me and an opportunity to take white box into the beyond!